


Long way down

by dsa_archivist



Category: due South
Genre: Drama, Gen, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-09-03
Updated: 2001-09-03
Packaged: 2018-11-11 05:45:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11142165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsa_archivist/pseuds/dsa_archivist
Summary: I love you came too late.





	Long way down

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Speranza, the archivist: this story was once archived at [Due South Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Due_South_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Due South Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/duesoutharchive).

  
Long way down

## Long way down

by silvina

Author's website: http://www.learnlink.emory.edu/~sdelcul/index2.html

Disclaimer: Standard Disclaimer. Yeah, well, so there. Please send comments, questions, compliments, and otters to sdelcul@yahoo.com.

Author's Notes: 

Story Notes: 

* * *

He'd had the chance, more than once, but he hadn't taken it. He'd known as far back as Irene and Louis's deaths, and as recently as arriving back in town after his vacation and not seeing Ray at the station even though Ray had said he might not be able to make it .   
\--Its innate worth, so lost, it can regain \--only by pouring back what guilt has spilled, \--repaying evil pleasure with just pain. 

He'd seen every opportunity available to him, and had discounted all of them because of his own fear In all his logic of when and where and how, he'd forgotten about that one variable you couldn't plug into a nice little equation of perfection--chaos. Entropy. Disorder. 

\--either that God, by courtesy alone,   
\--forgive his sin; or that the man himself, \--by his own penitence and pain, atone. 

One phone call hadn't been enough. A post card. No, not enough. It would never be enough. 

\--Should I expound this further?" he said to me. \--And I:"There is no need, for now I know \--nature cannot fall short of what must be." 

There were few options left, really. He'd taken a wait-and-see attitude, waiting for the right time, the right situation. It was too late now, and now he was forced to wait and see. Funny, that. 

\--And lead weights to your feet may my words be, \--that you move slowly, like a weary man, \--to the 'yes' and 'no' of what you do not see 

Ray might be fine. He might come back and follow him into the rabbit's hole one more time. Ruin another suit, as these things were. Or he might come back and hate him; or he might not come back at all. That was always a possibility, wasn't it? 

\--Search our book leaf by leaf and you will see, \--I have no doubt, written upon some page: \--'I am today all that I used to be.' 

Dante's Paradiso (as translated by John Ciardi) 

* * *

End Long way down by silvina:

Author and story notes above.


End file.
